Twisted Tales (22 page)

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Authors: Brandon Massey

BOOK: Twisted Tales
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“You okay?” Mya asked. She lowered the novel that she was reading and looked at him. “You were looking kinda tense.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Never felt better.”
They landed at LAX, and boarded the connecting flight to Kahalui, arriving there late in the afternoon.
Later that evening, at the Westin Maui Resort, Sean was in the bathroom applying a fresh coat of ointment to his burn when Mya called him into the bedroom.
He stuck his head out of the bathroom. Mya knelt beside the bed. She wore her nightgown, her dark hair spilling across her shoulders. Beyond the large window, surf crashed against the shore.
“Yes?” Sean asked. But he knew what she wanted, had been dreading this.
“I’m about to say my prayers,” she said. “Want to join me?”
You—who can’t even humble hisself enough to say ‘Amen’?
“You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll say mine after I’m done in here.”
Nodding, Mya turned away and bowed her head. She began to pray in a soft, fervent voice. She said Sean’s name, asking God to help him develop stronger faith.
He stepped back into the bathroom and shut the door.
Help Sean’s faith, Lord.
Sean looked at his reflection in the mirror.
Her prayer had failed, because he saw a man full of doubt.
 
Saturday evening, a week later, they arrived back home in Atlanta. Mya arose early the next morning to attend church. She sang a gospel hymn as she dressed. Tangled in sheets, Sean watched her from the bed with one eye cocked open.
She saw him looking. “Good morning, Sleepyhead. Coming to church with me?”
“I don’t think so. I’m wiped out. Jetlag.”
“Humph.” She pursed her lips with disapproval. “I think you need to go. It’ll help you.”
What’ll help me is you getting the hell out of here so I can go back to sleep. I don’t want to go to any damn church. Don’t you get it?
“I’m really tired, Mya,” he said.
“Fine.” She zipped up her red dress, and placed a big red hat on her head. “But I hope our marriage isn’t going to be like this, with you sleeping in every Sunday morning missing church.”
He didn’t respond to that jab. He rolled over and feigned sleep.
He heard her moving around in the bedroom, sighing loudly, to let him know that she was annoyed. After a few minutes, she left.
But Sean was unable to drift back to sleep. The sunlight streaming through the windows—she had opened the blinds to give them sun rays at full blast, a ploy to keep him awake—spotlighted the burn mark on his hand. It had faded in the past week, but it was still there. An uncomfortable reminder of his crisis of faith.
Giving up hope for sleep, he rose out of bed and dressed. He left the house in his Nissan Sentra.
He picked up a bouquet of fresh flowers at a local Kroger grocery store. Then he drove to Magnolia Grove Cemetery.
Grandma was buried there.
Since her death, he hadn’t visited her grave once. His emotional wounds were too tender. A visit to her grave would reawaken his anguish and plunge him into another despairing fit of grief.
But this morning, for reasons that he couldn’t explain, he felt compelled to go.
He parked in the cemetery, at the crest of the gravel path. Although the graveyard was home to several hundred decedents, he found Grandma’s plot quickly. A leafy maple offered a shady respite against the bright morning sun.
Grief stung Sean as he knelt in front of the headstone.
Marlene Robinson
1924–2005
A daughter of God. A servant of God.
A daughter of God? Well, God treated his children like shit.
Tears scalded Sean’s eyes. He carefully placed the flowers in the vase.
He dipped his head. He felt as though he should pray—for Grandma’s joy in the afterlife, perhaps for the care of his own soul. But his lips felt glued together.
He absently rubbed the burn mark.
Now that I’m here, I don’t know what the hell to do. Is this what paying your respects is all about?
“I had a feeling you’d come here,” a familiar voice said.
Startled, Sean looked up. Mya moved from behind the nearby maple tree, wearing a sky blue dress. At that moment, she was so beautiful to him she might have been an angel come to comfort him in his grief.
He wiped his eyes. “What are you doing here? I thought you went to church.”
“I did,” she said. “But then something told me you would be coming here, and I wanted to be here with you.”
He never would have thought of asking Mya to accompany him to his grandmother’s grave. He’d thought it was something he’d prefer to do in solitude. But he was glad that she was there.
She came to him and took his hand. She squeezed it, reassuringly.
“Thanks for being here.” He looked at the headstone. “I don’t really know why I came here, to be honest.”
“You’re looking for answers. You want to know why God took Grandma—after letting her suffer so terribly—when she was a woman of such strong faith. You don’t think God cares about people.”
She had read his mind, as she was apt to do sometimes. He nodded, solemnly.
“You’ve been angry at Him ever since Grandma passed,” she said.
“Furious,” he said. “Grandma deserved better. Why should anyone spend their life praying and going to church and serving God just so He can abandon you when you need Him the most?”
“Good questions,” she said. “But how do you know that God abandoned your grandmother?”
Sean pulled his hand away. “Come on, Mya. You saw how Grandma suffered.”
“Sometimes, God uses suffering to teach us lessons. What if God had been preparing your grandmother to pass on?”
“Preparing her by letting her sit senile in a nursing home, drooling like a baby and pissing on herself? That doesn’t sound like a loving God to me.”
“It is harsh.” Mya took his hand again and kissed it softly, which left a tingling sensation on his skin. “But not all lessons are easy, baby.”
Her words reverberated in his thoughts. He knelt to the headstone again. He ran his fingers across the inscription.
“I’ll leave you alone for now,” Mya said. “See you at home.”
“Okay,” he mumbled.
Alone again, he contemplated the headstone for a while.
God uses suffering to teach us lessons.
He had to admit, he didn’t understand God, not one bit. But he was willing to concede that maybe the relationship between his grandmother and God was personal, and none of his business.
... not all lessons are easy, baby.
He remained at the gravesite for another fifteen minutes, then he walked back to his car and drove home.
The house was quiet. Mya must have returned to church after she’d left the cemetery. The service she attended usually ended at ten thirty. He had about a half hour before she arrived home, so he set about preparing breakfast for them.
When Mya entered the house, he embraced her.
“Thanks for being there with me at the cemetery,” he said. “I fixed breakfast for us.”
“What’re you talking about?” Her face crinkled into a frown.
“You met me at my grandma’s grave this morning, said some stuff that’s had me thinking. I was just thanking you for that.”
“Baby, I never went to the cemetery. I’ve been at church the whole time.”
He opened his mouth to disagree—and then he noticed her clothes. She wore a red dress, which she’d been wearing when she’d left the house for church; when he saw her at the cemetery, she was wearing blue.
His world tilted, and began to spin. He stumbled to a chair.
“You okay?” she asked. She knelt in front of him, took his hands in hers.
He looked at his hand. At the cemetery, Mya—or whoever it had been—had kissed it.
The burn mark was gone.
Presumed Dead
Everyone thought Michael Benson was dead.
On a chilly October night eight years ago, he’d reportedly plunged his Mustang into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan. When the police discovered the vehicle a week later, they found clothes, a collection of hip-hop CDs, a fifth of Jack Daniel’s, and a suicide note preserved in a Ziploc bag
. My life is hell, and I can’t take it anymore
.
Although the cops never found a corpse, Michael Benson was presumed dead. A small cluster of friends and relatives attended the funeral, mourning over a blown-up photo of him, in lieu of a body.
But while they grieved, Michael was alive and enjoying his freedom.
He’d always been fascinated by the thought of his own death, had wondered who would attend his funeral, and what would happen there. Who would cry? Who would eulogize him? What would they say?
But when it actually went down, he’d already left town. He couldn’t take any chances of being seen anywhere in Zion.
Not while Big Daddy Jay was still around.
If Big Daddy Jay knew Michael was alive, he would arrange another death for him—and that one would be real.
 
Afterward, Michael moved to Atlanta.
Atlanta was the place to be for a young, single, upwardly mobile black man like him. A man like him could accomplish big things in A-Town.
He changed his name to Ricky; Richard was his middle name, and his mother, who’d passed when he was a teenager, used to call him Ricky. He changed his last name to Jordan, because he’d been a longtime fan of the great basketball player. He used an underground connection to get a new Social Security Number, too.
Carrying twenty-five thousand dollars—his life savings—in a briefcase, he moved to a one-bedroom apartment in College Park, a city on the Southside, and got a job barbering at a local barbershop. He’d learned to cut hair during a two-year stint in prison (he’d landed there due to a trumped-up burglary beef). His skills with clippers came in handy as he set up his new life.
In no time, he’d built up a list of reliable clients, and was earning good money. He met a woman, named Kisha, a thick Georgia Peach sister, and she moved in with him. She was a fabulous cook and even better in bed. Life was good.
But his old life called to him, like a sweet, forbidden lover.
Cards.
The cards had gotten him into trouble back home. The cards had made him decide to plan his death. He owed big debts to Big Daddy Jay because of those cards. Debts he couldn’t repay if he lived to be two hundred.
It took all of his self-discipline to avoid the cards’ powerful pull. But he did. He knew that if he gave in to the urge to play, he would eventually find himself in the same bind there in Atlanta. And then he might blow his cover. He couldn’t risk blowing his cover, not ever.
Big Daddy Jay’s reach extended far outside of Illinois, after all.
So he stayed away from the cards. But he satisfied his thirst to stay abreast of happenings in his hometown by studying the local metro newspaper,
The News Sun
, on the Internet. He missed home terribly. But he could never return for a visit, not while Big Daddy Jay was alive.
Therefore, he paid special attention to the obituaries.
Eight years later, when he was up late one night cruising the newspaper online, he read the obituary that he’d dreamt so long of finding.
Big Daddy Jay had died, of natural causes, at the age of eighty-seven. Owner of Jay’s Meats & Foods, a mom-and-pop business (which was no more than a legit front for his illegal activities), the paper included a recent photo of the great man. He wore a Kangol cocked on his bald head, his snow-white mustache trimmed to perfection. His face lean and grave, he bore a strong resemblance to the actor Lou Gossett Jr. He used to joke that people would approach the actor and ask him if he was Big Daddy Jay—not the other way around.
Big Daddy Jay was that kind of man.
When Michael read the obituary, he let out a whoop of joy so loud that Kisha awoke and came to ask him what was going on.
“It’s nothing,” Michael said. “I thought my Powerball numbers had hit. I was wrong.”
Frowning, she returned to bed.
But Michael stayed up for a while longer. This was almost as good as winning the lottery.
Finally,
he thought.
Finally, I can go home
.
Two weeks later, he did.
 
“This looks like a nice little town, Ricky,” Kisha said, as he steered the Jeep along Sheridan Road, the town’s primary drag. “Has it changed much since the last time you was here?”
“It’s changed a lot,” he said. “That Applebee’s we just passed—that wasn’t here when I moved away. And they didn’t have that Comfort Inn or a Wal-Mart, either.”
“No Wal-Mart?” Kisha’s eyes widened, as if the thought of a town without a Wal-Mart was as unthinkable as a house without plumbing. “Dang, where did y’all go, then?”
We went to Big Daddy Jay’s,
Michael wanted to tell her, but kept his mouth shut.
There, you could get everything you needed—and then some.
They were nearing the old, two-story brick building that Big Daddy Jay had owned for as long as Michael could remember. A big, faded red and white sign announcing J
AY’S MEATS & FOODS
hung out front. Just like Michael remembered.
Passing by the store, he slowed.
“That was y’alls grocery store?” Kisha clucked her tongue. “Ain’t they got a Publix or something here?”
Michael shook his head absently. He was staring at the building.
It was a few minutes past ten o’clock in the evening, and the grocery store closed at nine. The CLOSED sign hung on the front door.
But he wasn’t looking at the store. He was looking at the second-floor, which housed Big Daddy Jay’s office.
The blinds were closed but could not hide the light burning inside.
The infamous poker games always took place up there. In that same room, after a long night of horrifyingly bad luck, Michael had decided that the only way to stay alive was for him to convince Big Daddy Jay that he was dead—and escape town.
What was going on in there? Were the games still in progress, even after the great man’s death?
Chilled, and not quite sure why, he kept driving.
 
They had booked a room at a Best Western in Waukegan, a city fifteen minutes south of town. As Kisha dressed for bed, Michael grabbed his car keys.
“Where you going, baby?” she asked. Wearing a silk negligee, she lay on the bed atop the comforter. One of her hands touched her large, round breasts, lingered on a nipple.
Ordinarily the sight of Kisha, dressed provocatively and eager for sex, would’ve kept him inside even if a tornado had been bearing down on them. But he only looked at her, shrugged.
“I need to go somewhere,” he said. “Alone. I won’t be gone long, an hour or so.”
“You’re leaving me here?” Her voice bordered on a whine.
“I’ll be back soon.”
He kissed her quickly and went to the Jeep. Driving, he marveled at how easily he remembered his way around. While a lot had changed, some things never do, he thought.
The same thought occurred to him when he arrived in the small parking lot behind Big Daddy Jay’s store. A collection of cars—an Oldsmobile, a Dodge Ram, a Chevy sedan, a Buick—occupied the lot. Cars that belonged to the players, for sure.
But a gleaming white Cadillac sedan was parked in the corner, beside the door. Big Daddy Jay’s car. The man drove Cadillacs, exclusively, and used to joke that he’d be buried in his Coup DeVille.
Obviously, since the old man had died, no one had bothered to touch his car. Maybe out of respect. But it surprised Michael. He had assumed that Big Daddy Jay’s son, Tommy Boy, had assumed full control of the business. Ever since he’d been a teenager, Tommy Boy had done most of the work at the market, anyway (the legal work, that is). Why leave the car sitting there like that?
Michael’s gaze traveled upward, to the shuttered windows, behind which lights still shone.
And why continue the card games?
Someone tapped on Michael’s window.
Michael stifled a scream. He’d been so entranced with thoughts of what was happening up there that he hadn’t seen anyone approach.
A lean, rangy black man waited beside the Jeep. Dressed in a dark suit with a loosely knotted tie, the guy smoked a cigarette, puffing wispy rings into the night air. In his other hand, he held a brown paper bag that, in the timeless manner of drunks, undoubtedly concealed a flask of whisky.
But his black beady eyes focused intently on Michael.
Michael didn’t lower the window. Although it was dark out and he couldn’t see every detail of the guy’s face, he knew this man—people around town called him “Peanut.” Peanut, a veteran gambler, had lost a few grand to Michael, back in the day.
Peanut bent and peered closer.
“Don’t I know you, brother?” He spoke in a ragged, smoker’s voice.
“Uh, no. I don’t think so. I’m not from here.”
“I never forget a man’s eyes.” Rising, Peanut took a swig of whisky. “You got eyes just like a brother I used to know. Name was Mike B.”
After faking his death, Michael had drastically changed his appearance. He’d lost thirty pounds. (It was easy to lose weight when your life, literally, depended on it.) He’d grown a goatee, wearing facial hair for the first time. He wore contact lenses, instead of glasses. He’d cut his hair short, ditching the wild, Michael Evans-from-
Good Times
Afro. He didn’t look like the same person.
But Michael knew—and Peanut knew—that you never forget someone you played cards with; especially if you’d lost money to the man. You remembered the eyes. The eyes never changed.
Big Daddy Jay’s eyes haunted Michael’s dreams.
“You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” Michael said. He slid his hand to the gearshift. It was time to get out of here.
Michael’s gaze flicked across the upper window of the building. A tall, broad silhouette had moved to the glass.
Michael’s heartbeat accelerated.
“No, I ain’t mistaken you for someone else,” Peanut said. His lips curled in a smile, and it registered with Michael that something was
wrong
with Peanut’s face; it seemed bloodless, like dead skin.
“Naw,” Peanut continued. “You know better, Mike B.”
Michael couldn’t afford to stay around here another minute. He slammed the gears into DRIVE. He mashed the gas pedal and ripped across the gravel.
Behind him, Peanut shouted: “Wait till Big Daddy finds out!”
Big Daddy Jay’s dead,
Michael thought, as cold sweat ran down his back.
But as he drove back to the hotel, he couldn’t get the image of that tall, broad silhouette out of his mind.
 
Kisha was awake, watching Jay Leno, when Michael returned to the hotel room.
“Where was you?” She sat up. “I almost fell asleep waiting on your butt.”
“I wanted to do a little sightseeing.”
“This late?”
He stood at the foot of the king-size bed. Kisha had pulled up the bedsheets to cover herself. He yanked the sheets away; she was nude underneath, and the sight of her voluptuous body sent desire crackling through his muscles.
“I need you,” he said. “Badly.”
“Then come on, baby. I been waiting.”
He stripped out of his clothes and climbed onto the bed.
He made love to Kisha with a fierce—almost desperate—energy that he’d never known. Propped on his arms above her, thrusting wildly, he climaxed, shouting and sweating.
Kisha pulled him down on top of her. She massaged his back.
“Feel better now?” she asked.
“Yeah.” His heart still raced from the after effects of the orgasm.
“Something’s been heavy on your mind. I see right through you, you know.”
He paused. “It’ll be okay.”
He made the statement to calm Kisha, but he found that he felt more composed, too. More clearheaded. He saw his ridiculous fears that Big Daddy Jay had returned as just that—ridiculous. That shadow he’d spotted in the window had to have been someone else.
Wait till Big Daddy finds out!
And Peanut, his pallor showing that he was clearly ill, had been drunk and talking nonsense. Even when Michael had known him, back in the day, the guy had been prone to chugging whisky like an athlete drinking Gatorade. He’d only been trying to scare Michael with his drunken gibberish.
Big Daddy Jay was dead. For real.
Kisha squeezed his butt, drawing his attention. “Will you take me to Chi-town tomorrow, Ricky?”

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